Tings are falling apart in the concluding book of Pullman's latest trilogy, the next of the author's magisterial trilogies set in a universe that appears, in this volume especially, as a charged and skewed version of our own. Institutions are crumbling, or restructuring themselves along new and disquieting lines. An invisible force "is ruining the air and the seasons"; concurrently, "currency is failing, and no one knows why". Control is draining from authorities, and pooling in the chambers of theocrats, the coffers of business empires, the control of crowds. "Some force is at work, silently, imperceptibly", says businessman a merchant figure, keeping a vigilant eye on the Silk Roads from his post in an city cafe. "Things we thought were secure and durable are deteriorating and collapsing."
Core Enigma and The Protagonist's Path
Just what that element might be, and how to counteract it, is the inquiry that drives this final volume, which resumes where its predecessor left off. This is, reportedly, Pullman's concluding excursion into the carefully crafted, infinitely beguiling realm he first revealed in the distant past, with the launch of Northern Lights. It's a realm whose geography aligns with that of the real world, but whose history veers and changes with ours; where the individuals look and reason and act like us, but are paired by animal souls, essences in beast form; where the heavens are filled with sorceresses and gryphons, but underneath, buses are caught and tea is consumed, and middle-aged professors carry luxury shopping bags. The protagonist, whom we first introduced to as a 12-year-old in the first trilogy, and then saw again as a toddler in the first volume, the origin story with which the author began this trilogy, is now a adult: still recognisably the spiky and determined heroine of the previous installments, but aged, sadder, warier, less sure. This circumscription is heightened by her split from her soul companion, her daemon – but it was also, ironically, the trigger which led him to leave her in the first place.
Converging Storylines
The daemon's resolve to leave in quest of that childlike part of the heroine which she may have forgotten (an quality which he epitomises as her "vision"), and her quest to reconnect with him, were the catalysts of its predecessor, which chronicled Lyra undertake a wandering trek across the continent and into the Caucasus, encountering with amazement and peril on the way. But from the outset, underlying forces were in action, and malevolent elements at work. The religious council – the church's ruling body, and Pullman's deliciously chilling embodiment of austere, procedural malice – is under recent guidance, and asserting its power. The antagonist – Lyra's relative, who blames her for his sister's death – has manoeuvred himself into the office of head of the authority's High Council, and is determined on using his newfound influence to broaden the church's dominium. Another protagonist, who carried infant the heroine to safety along a flooded river as an young boy in La Belle Sauvage, is now an academic with a secondary role in intelligence work: he is sent to a key location to find out more about the antagonist's aims. And behind all of this is the mystery surrounding the scarce and precious rose oil which seems mysteriously to be the source of a societal and financial crisis spreading out from the region. The substance is viewed by certain groups as a tradeable product, by alternate groups as a research-based or esoteric phenomenon, and by further factions – the fanatical "highland figures" – as a source of darkness; an insult that must be obliterated. The question of where it comes from, its significance, and whether it should be eliminated or safeguarded is coming rapidly to the fore.
Similar to His Dark Materials, Lyra's actions, and her future, are demonstrated to be inseparably connected with the destiny of the world
In The Secret Commonwealth, these storylines ran mostly in parallel. In this final book, they merge. Like the first trilogy, her actions and her destiny are revealed to be deeply linked with the future of the world. Her individual journey to reconnect with her companion and regain her imagination becomes the key conflict in a larger war with an oppressive regime which, as such regimes often attempt, is seeking to stifle independence of thought, innovation and culture: all the inner, defiant ways in which people can be independent.
Atmospheric Fissures and Moral Battles
The story opens with the finding of a set of curious openings in the fabric of the planet's atmosphere: portals that look to lead to other worlds. One such opening seems to be the point of the much debated botanical substance. The authority, with its leader at its leadership, designates these openings as a challenge to the institution's doctrine and endeavors to eradicate them. As the heroine begins to shift from rigid rationalism and back to instinct, yet, her certainty that these places must be preserved – that what they stand for and what they provide is in some way essential – grows. "The substance, or the extract, or the imagination, or the botanical realm, or no matter what we name it," she says, "we require it." The stage for a philosophical conflict between innocence and maturity is prepared.
Plot Rhythm and Protagonist Growth
At over six hundred pages, The Rose Field|this volume|the
